


we floated there along with clouds

by Damkianna



Category: Donovan's Reef (1963)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Backstory, Gen, Missing Scene, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 18:49:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5467253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trip to the canyons of Hakeakaloha for a Christmas tree had made for easily the strangest day Amelia had spent on the island. (Or: between the Christmas tree scene and Miss Lafleur's performance, Amelia invites Lelani to go swimming.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	we floated there along with clouds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beatrice_Otter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Otter/gifts).



> Your persistence in asking for this movie, and your additional posts about it, are the only reason I tracked it down, watched it, and wrote you this, Beatrice_Otter—so this is practically your own Yuletide gift to yourself. :D I hope you aren't disappointed!
> 
> Title pulled from [The Sunday Swim, Comanche Trace](http://writersalmanac.org/episodes/20150927/), by Noel Crook. Since this is Amelia's POV and is set before the reveal, Lelani is intentionally referred to as Lelani Donovan a couple times.

  


The trip to the canyons of Hakeakaloha for a Christmas tree had made for easily the strangest day Amelia had spent on the island.

She had always navigated Boston with insistence, confidence, self-assurance; she did not have much practice with feeling wrong-footed. And everything about Hakeakaloha felt almost unreal, a game of pretend: swimming in the bright blue ocean, collecting a Christmas tree in short sleeves while sweating under the beating sun—listening to a girl sing to a canyon goddess. Pleasant and pretty, but also almost—silly, light and meaningless. Reality as Amelia knew it was cold dark water, snowy streets under a gray sky, solemn respectful hymns in churches; and that was not Hakeakaloha.

But then she had climbed up to the marker by the canyon, and Mr. Donovan had told her about the war—that it had reached even here, that there was death and pain and loss in this place alongside the warm water and endless sunlight and candy-vivid plumeria. It had—it had shaken her, truthfully, and perhaps that was why she'd blurted out that Christmas invitation, even though it should have been obvious that Lelani and the children would rather spend Christmas with their father.

And then Lelani had accepted it—had accepted it even though it had been so clumsily done, even though Amelia had put her foot in it at the canyonside. It had left Amelia feeling like she had something to apologize for, even though she couldn't quite put her finger on what. It _had_ been a strange thing to do, to stop and sing to the canyon, to say so matter-of-factly that it was for a goddess. Boston would undoubtedly have agreed.

But Boston was also very, very far away. And it was not Boston but Lelani who would be at Amelia's father's house for Christmas, so perhaps it was not Boston's opinion that mattered.

There had been one time when Lelani had been thrilled with Amelia, though—had been laughing, shouting and cheering for her, waving wildly. And the memory of that moment was why Amelia found herself next to the pool through the back of Donovan's Reef, explaining that she hoped to invite Lelani to go swimming.

"Lelani," Mr. Donovan repeated.

"Yes," Amelia said firmly. "If you don't mind."

Mr. Donovan raised his eyebrows at her and then turned and shouted up the stairs. "Lelani?"

Amelia would have had a few choice words for anyone who tried to summon her that way—but of course Lelani must be used to it, from her father. (They seemed less and less alike to Amelia, the more time she spent with them. But they were certainly fond of each other, if nothing else.)

Lelani came to the head of the stairs, saying, "Yes," and then saw Amelia and seemed to catch herself, pausing a step away from the top stair. "Yes, Father?" she said carefully.

Mr. Donovan grimaced. "Miss Dedham would like to go swimming," he said, in that sardonic tone he liked so much. "With you."

But it didn't matter how rude he was being—Lelani's face positively lit up, and she looked at Amelia and clasped her hands together. "Oh, Amelia," she said, "that would be lovely."

  


*

  


When Lelani asked which beach they were going to, Amelia almost answered—and then she paused and tapped her fingers against the wheel of the Jeep. "Why don't you pick?" she said slowly.

Lelani grinned at her.

They ended up on a beach Amelia had never seen before—no surprise, really, since she was only familiar with two of them. Lelani was out of the Jeep almost before it had stopped moving, and she put the basket of food they had brought with them very responsibly on a level spot on the sand and then positively flung herself into the water. She had already swum out the length of a swimming pool and back by the time Amelia had unfolded her towels.

"The water's very nice today," she called, wading out and shaking her wet hair back.

"As far as I can tell," Amelia told her, "the water is very nice here every day."

Lelani beamed, and didn't disagree. She splashed the last few steps toward the sand and held out one dripping arm to point. "The shoreline makes a sort of harbor here," she said. "See that rock, out where the breakers start? We like to race out to it sometimes."

"Who does?"

"Sally and I, mostly," Lelani said. "Sometimes some of the other girls from church come, too. Luki's a little bit too small to go out that far—but he doesn't like it when Sally says so."

Amelia laughed. "No, I imagine he doesn't."

She'd finished unbuttoning her shirt, and had to bend down to skim her pants off, one leg at a time. No one here batted an eye at women wearing nothing but swimsuits and sarongs, but Amelia hadn't quite been able to convince herself to drive into town like that.

Perhaps she'd get there, if she stayed here long enough.

"If you don't mind me asking, Amelia," Lelani said, "how did you learn to swim so well?"

"Not exactly what you were expecting from Dr. Dedham's daughter from Boston?"

Lelani looked away for a moment—a little embarrassed, Amelia assumed—and then shrugged. "I—I don't know very much about Boston," she admitted, "though I can find it on a map, of course. But my—my father says that it's a pit of corporate connivance full of stuck-up snots and dirty water that's frozen half the year."

"Yes," Amelia said dryly, "I imagine he does. And I suppose he isn't wrong. You can't swim in the Charles these days, it's too—" _polluted_ , but what could that word possibly mean to Lelani? "—cold. But there are plenty of swimming pools: places where you can go inside, to swim around. I was in the local swim club for years, when I was younger. There were classes."

"Classes?" Lelani sounded startled. "You—studied it, with homework?"

Of course it sounded ridiculous to her, Amelia thought. Everyone swam here, whenever they liked. "Not exactly," Amelia said, "but yes, there were teachers, and yes, we did work at it very hard. I liked it, so I worked harder, and I did very well. I—"

She hesitated. She had never told anyone this, had never said it aloud at all. It wasn't something she had done very much in Boston, telling people how she felt, things she remembered, and expecting them to care about it. It wasn't proper anyway, to be forward like that.

But Lelani was watching her with patient dark eyes, face open and kind, listening.

"It was a place I could be away from my mother," Amelia said quietly.

Lelani went very still; and then, with slow care, sat down on the sand, legs folding up beneath her—as though, Amelia thought, she meant to tell Amelia she wanted to hear more, as though she didn't mind how long this might take.

Amelia sat down beside her, and pushed her hands, her feet, into the sun-hot sand, watching the grains spill up over her knuckles. "I think she sent me at first when I was a girl to be rid of me," Amelia said, and then shook her head and looked out at the water. "Oh, that sounds dreadful—I don't mean it like that. To get me out of her hair, that's all. She was very—very careful, very organized. She liked everything to be clean and neat and in its proper place. And I was quite a bit of trouble when I was a child."

She glanced up, and caught Lelani hiding a smile behind one hand. "Oh, I'm sorry," Lelani said instantly, "I just—that's such a picture, Amelia."

Amelia grinned at her—and she'd expected it to feel strange and difficult, to smile after saying things like that, but it wasn't. She didn't mind Lelani's smile, either. It all seemed so far behind her now; not painless, but only a soft wistful ache, none of the sharp unhappiness she'd sometimes felt as a teenager. "I'm sure it is. And it was easier, as I got older," she added. "She could explain what she expected of me, and I could do it—and then swimming let me take a break from all that, and I loved it even more. I hadn't gone in a few years, until I came here. Hadn't had the time. Honestly, I'm a little surprised I managed to beat your father."

Lelani looked startled for a moment, and then recovered and made a sly face. "So was he," she said, laughing.

"Yes, he was," Amelia agreed, and the smugness she could hear in her own voice was undoubtedly very unbecoming—but her mother wasn't here to scold her for it.

They sat on the beach and grinned at each other for a moment, and then it occurred to Amelia that she could very well ask the same.

"And you? Who taught you?"

Lelani's face went shadowed, and Amelia instantly wished she hadn't asked; but it was too late to take it back. Lelani plucked at the sand for a moment without speaking, and then looked out at the water and said softly, " _My_ mother."

"I'm sorry," Amelia said, but Lelani was already shaking her head.

"No," Lelani said, "it's all right, Amelia. It's—it's nice, really. Everyone here already knows everything, except for Sally and Luki, and they don't really understand any of it. It's nice to have someone to talk to about her. That is, if you—"

"Please," Amelia said, and surprised herself with how earnestly she meant it.

Lelani smiled at her, very small, and then looked out toward the sea again. "It wasn't that she taught me, exactly," she said, slowly, "but in my earliest memories of being in the water, she is always there. She loved to swim, and she must have started bringing me to the beach when I was only a baby, because I know I could swim before I could walk. She only told me a few things—to watch for stone fish, to keep away from cone shells—but I watched her swim all the time and did what she did, and she was always there to pull me up if I sank."

And to think, Amelia had watched these children at lessons and thought about schools in Massachusetts, had looked around their warm little classroom and thought it sad, and them unlucky. "She sounds lovely," Amelia said, throat tight.

"She was," Lelani agreed. "We brought Sally with us sometimes, too, after she was born—but she was so little. She doesn't remember." She looked down at the sand. "I try to bring them with me as often as I can, to swim with them like she would, to tell them about Mother. I'm not sure it means anything to them yet, but perhaps someday it will."

"Well," Amelia said, "of course I would not claim that anyone could replace your mother. Or that anyone ought to try. But you are—you are a wonderful sister. Sally and Luki are very lucky."

Lelani looked at her silently for just long enough that Amelia began to worry she had said something wrong; and then Lelani began to smile. Only a little, at first, and then wider, wider, so broad and pleased it made her eyes crinkle up at the corners. "Thank you, Amelia," she said, in that odd dignified way she had.

Such gravity, even when she was smiling! Boston would not know at all what to make of her—but then Boston, Amelia thought, did not have half Lelani Donovan's grace or self-possession. Boston had never seemed further away, nor mattered to Amelia less, than at this moment.

So Boston, perhaps, could go hang.

"Now," Amelia said, "I believe you said something about a race?"  



End file.
